Avenge Me Book 1- The Prequel
by Ezra Cross
Summary: So, how did Clint Barton and Laura meet? Why did she decide to say Yes? What do her parents think of him? Did Fury really set Clint up? Was Clint there for the birth of his kids? These are questions we all need answered, and here it is from Clint's perspective! Enjoy these mini chapters about how Clint's life changed from bachelor, to Daddyhawk. Claura! Whump! and hilarious Natasha
1. Chapter 1

So, I have been approached about this by SO many of you that I decided it was high time to get down to business and write it. The story prompt was courtesy of a perfectly timed PM by KakashiScarecrow. (i had just gotten out of Ant-Man) It read like this:

 _(Hi, first off I just want to say I love your writing. It's so hard to find an amazing Clint-centric story with some good whump in them. I've been reading all of them in order and have fallen in love. Anyways, I read your most recent Avengers story, Avenge Me, and a thought popped into my head. On the plane in the story after Clint is shot and he's talking about how he came into Laura's emergency room and proposed, it hit me. I was wondering if you had considered writing a story about that specifically. Like Clint getting injured, meeting Laura, and getting to know each other. I just personally thought it could make a good story and would definitely read it. If you don't pursue it I won't be offended, but I just thought it pass on the idea. Thank you!)_

So, for all you desperate people out there wondering how our favorite knuckle head landed such an amazing catch, here is the story. From Clint's perspective.

* * *

 **"Avenge Me" the prequel**

"No," I said, and meant it.

Director Nick Fury leveled a glare at me, the one he thought I'd never seen before but in fact was his go-to for forcing men to do his bidding. He forgot the effort it took to get me to bend beneath his thumb. Bribery, burgers, and promise of improved tech did that. Not "the glare" from daddy. I sat, arms crossed, steadfast in the passenger seat of the Lincoln town car and refused to budge. Sitting in the middle of the rear seats, Agent Phil Coulson cracked a smile and tried to hide a snicker beneath the collar of his shirt. I heard it regardless.

"Agent Clint Barton, you are picking your butt up out of that chair and getting it through that door or else I am going to shoot you in the thigh and drag you in myself," Fury attempted his second tactic beneath all out request. Threats.

I glanced out the passenger window for a third time. The rain drove down in sheets like a Thailand monsoon. It nearly obscured the sign swinging in the midnight darkness. _"All Creatures from Small to Tall",_ the wide, blue letters read. Someone must have thought themselves clever, or at the least talented. Beneath the artful scribe was the silhouette of a cat inside a dog inside a cow inside a horse. We had parked in front of a veterinary hospital.

"No," I put my second foot down. Fury didn't make threats lightly. I knew him capable and willing to do everything he said. I also knew he needed me back in the field for the Keiv mission in four days. Considering the nick in my arm, I returned my attention to him. "I'm fine, director. Just drive back to the apartment."

"If you were fine, I wouldn't have driven here at all. If you were fine, I would have told you to spit in it, grind some dirt around it, and get back to LaGuardia yourself. Instead, Agent Coulson had to go pick you up, shoot five men, and then I had to uproot myself from a meeting I didn't necessarily want to be in to begin with, and drive you here." Fury's voice escalated as he spoke. He didn't yell, he often never required it, one could simply hear the venom he infused into the syllables the sharper they exited his mouth. Ending the recitation, he sat back in the driver's seat and flexed his hands on the steering wheel. I could hear the pull of the leather against knuckles.

"Look, Barton. I don't trust much. And yes, I need you back in the field, as in yesterday, to handle this Black Widow problem. I cannot in good faith think you can face that like this." He pointed to the stab wound in my arm.

"I can shoot with my left—"

"OUT!" He roared.

I narrowed my eyes at him, grabbed the handle of the door and kicked the side panel open. I left a Russian curse behind as I booted the door shut. Fury winced at my abuse of his favorite city car. Frankly, I didn't care.

I yanked up the collar to my jacket and pulled the fabric around me. The rain stung like a swarm of wasps. It was hot, humid, steaming rain like only the middle of July can produce. Somewhere in the distance I heard the clap of thunder. I used to like summer rain. Not in the middle of the night, not when I was standing in it, and not when I was walking up to a veterinary hospital outside New York with a five inch stab wound in my arm I'd much rather treat myself.

I stood on the porch beneath the wind-thrashed awning and glared into the dark parlor. It looked abandoned. Glancing the way I'd come, I realized Fury had taken off with the car and Coulson.

"Hell," I whispered at first, then moved on to a stronger words. Turning, I noticed a buzzer by the door frame and hit the button. I didn't hear any sound inside, and reached out to try again.

The inward swinging door sprung open and a cacophony of noise and light poured out. A black woman with short hair stood in the crescent of fluorescent light. She wore thin, green scrubs and a surgical mask dangled from two tied strings around her neck. She launched an accusatory eyebrow my way.

"Name and agent ID number?" She demanded.

 _The gatekeeper_ , I thought and gave her both.

She produced a digital pad emblazoned with the Stark Industries logo and scrolled through the information. I'd been through this process before, though never at a veterinary hospital as a front. SHIELD had many so-called private clinics for agents throughout the countries it frequented. Most hospitals had rules, protocols, and guidelines to file with red tape long enough to circle the moon and back forty-three times. Fury proposed to host its own clinics, staffed with skilled doctors on SHIELD's retainer. We called them Pop Tents, but I'm not sure why.

"Hawkeye?" the nurse affirmed.

I nodded.

She stepped back, propping the door open with one hand and allowing me to come in. "Be a bit of a wait. Had a steady influx all night. Y'all been busy out there. My name's Jamiqua and I don't make your coffee, so you go on and do it yourself. You planning to die or pass out or throw up in my waiting room, then I got a few rules. You die, you tell me first. Saves me having to poke you in an hour and figure it out myself. You pass out, lemme know before hand. I hate calling in the plastic surgeon this time of night just to fix your broken face for something stupid. You vomit, I aint your momma, so I aint cleaning it up. This place gets turned over at 6 a.m., so we are on a tight schedule and so is the doc. There's five ahead of you."

Jamiqua pointed out a chair along the wall and I headed for it. She disappeared around a corner and a few minutes later I could see her sit behind the paw-print covered desk.

Five agents ahead of me might take hours to get through. Most of the clinics outside major cities had normal activities they ran during the day. Apparently this place was a veterinary hospital to the thousands that attended it in the day, while at night, SHIELD paid to outsource the space as a one-stop agent fixer-upper. The day shift received a healthy compensation for entertaining this little service, though one might not see it by the outside looks. I'm sure the "Hang in There" kitten poster over my head hadn't been switched out in fifteen years.

If SHIELD turned this place over to the day-shift at 6 a.m., most likely I'd not be seen and I'd have to try one of the day-run clinics east of Manhattan. Fighting my way through the city at that time of day made me want to roll through the standard ER, paperwork or not. I sized up the competition in line first, trying to decide whether my stabbed arm muscled me into a higher rank than them.

One guy had a patch over his eye stained in blood. Another laid on the floor next to the first's leg. Blood seeped under the chair on a slope away from him. I'm not sure where it came from. The third and fourth men looked visibly ill. They shared a trashcan and occasionally bent over to vomit into it. The fifth must have been in the exam room already.

"Is that guy dead?" I asked the man with the patched eye. He looked over at me a little dazed. I assumed he'd sustained a concussion from the imprint of an iron someone steamed into the side of his face. Emerging from his confusion he suddenly dropped his head down to the man lying on the floor.

"I—I guess I don't know," he stuttered. I wondered that if I hadn't pointed the body out, whether he'd known someone was there at all.

Thinking of Jamiqua's rule of three, I trudged across the exam room and looked down at the agent. I prodded his shoulder a little with my boot, stooped down, and felt for a pulse.

I looked up at iron-face. "Did you bring him in here?" I asked.

He had to think about that for a long time. It didn't matter, the man was already dead and he had all the time in the world now.

"I . . .uh . . .yeah. Yeah, I carried him. He wasn't—I mean—they hit us so fast."

"Who?"

"That, uh, the thing, ya know?"

I shook my head slowly. "No, I don't know."

He blinked in his confusion. "You don't know?"

"Barton?"

I shifted on the balls of my feet, still kneeling over the dead man and saw Fury in the doorway. He curled his finger, begging me over. I didn't bother dismissing myself from the other agent.

"Guy called himself Doc OC, real nutcase," Fury said when I came close enough. "Shook most of them up. Thompson?"

I hiked a thumb at the dead man and Fury nodded. I shook my head and he nodded again.

"Tore up half the city. Lot of agents down. You were on an independent radio line, so you didn't get the chatter. They see you yet?"

"Nope. Got iron head, thing one and two, then some other one in ahead of me." I reported. Turning to the front desk, I leaned over the purple pawprints and whispered to Jamiqua, "You can move me up a slot, Agent Thompson's dead."

She seemed unphased. "I ain't movin' you nowhere. I knew he was. What you think, I got my degree out of a cracker jack box? 'sides, I know what you did to my cousin Tamara and her girlfriend Alisha, and my girlfriend Bobbi. You are Bad News Barton and darn proud of it!"

I narrowed my eyes. So I liked girls. What man didn't? I never realized my reputation preceded me. Fury pushed in, elbowing my arm out of his way. Maybe he forgot it was the same limb I'd been stabbed in, or maybe he planned that, either way I went reeling backwards clutching at the bleeding wound while stars danced around my eyes like cherubs riding unicorns. I grunted angrily.

Before I'd recovered my wits, he grabbed me, by the same arm again, and proceeded to drag me for the exam room hallway. A giggling Jamiqua fanned herself behind the front desk and checked out Fury's rear while we passed.

"Oh Lord!" she exclaimed, hotly.

I never asked, or wanted to know, what Nick Fury was capable of saying to that woman.

He opened the first door were came to, found it occupied with an agent screaming about his leg wound, and tried the second. This one proved empty and he deposited me on the stainless steel table inside. It had been built for a dog, or similar ornery animal. As I sat, a scale at the top boldly declared my weight in angry, green numbers. A chart across from me explained the importance of periodically brushing my dog's teeth while another declared the "bold new advance" in flea care was something called Frontline. I simultaneously enjoyed the fact I had no pet, and wanted one.

"Just sit there and they'll send someone back. I don't have all night for this." Fury said, looming over a plastic, worm infested heart.

I wanted to bark back at him and declare how much I never agreed to come here in the first place, but knew it wouldn't do any good. I got cut, not him. Any argument was officially null and void. I never expected the Black widow to be as fast as she was. My mistake, not his. I had to get to Kiev and track her down. Again, my mission, not his. I decided to say nothing.

Then again, I can't just say nothing. It's not how I work.

"We could just glue it," I suggested.

His good eye closed. "The last time you did that, it got infected."

"Yeah, but that was like, ten days later. I could be in Kiev and back in ten days."

"We aren't gluing it."

A knock came to the door at the same time Fury's phone rang. He turned away, placing the receiver to his ear and I watched him. The doctor filed in beside us.

"Calm do—Stop—Greg, no, Greg, listen to me I am not issuing that order. The answer is no. I am sending Barton in the minute—You tell your men to pull back or else—" Fury stalked out of the exam room, slamming the door shut hard enough to rattle the doggy dental chart.

The minute Natasha Romanov showed up on SHIELD's radar for the first time, everyone spun out of control. A Black Widow sighting hadn't occurred since Peggy Carter worked in the original SHIELD office in the days before SHIELD even existed. Fury had a sense on how deadly one Black Widow could be, though he shared little of that with me. He felt I could take her out. I agreed, but a little more information would have been nice. In the meantime, he wanted every other agent pulled back until I was back on the hunt.

"He seems upset."

I'd forgotten the doc arrived. My head swiveled to check him—well her—out.

"Special Agent stuff," I said.

She nodded, scanning through what amounted to fifteen pages of recent medical history. Surprisingly she didn't comment on how many time's I'd blown through various Pop Tents in the past. After a while of catching herself up on the details, the stool swiveled in my direction and I had a chance to see her face.

She had a nice smile. A surprise for a girl just getting to the end of what I would discover is her 18 hour shift. She tucked a long strand of brown hair back behind the petit lobe of her ear and raised curious eyes to mine.

"Agent Barton, my name is Dr. Smith. I'll be taking care of you tonight. I see you have a stab wound to your upper arm. Would it be all right if I took a look at it?" I must have given her a strange expression because she went on to explain. "Some agents are dragged in here against their will. Most big, bad men like yourself prefer to handle these sorts of things with a little dirt, a slap, and walk it off. I am happy you have come to me, but I will only treat you if you want to be. I've had enough experiences where trained operatives accidentally try to kill me because they get a little excited and angry about being worked on."

I glanced at the door, wondering if Fury could hear the doc talking smack about me. More so I wondered if he put her up to it.

"Agent Barton?"

By way of answer, I yanked the hastily tied pressure bandage off my bicep. I meant for it to look manlier, and then a gush of blood literally erupted out of my arm. I swore, frightened by the shock of it, and hurriedly slapped my free hand over the cut. Blood proceed to squirt between my fingers and in ten seconds flat half of me, and the doc, was covered in it.

She glided out of the chair like a seasoned pro, grabbed a pack of gauze, a tourniquet, and some white bandage tape. It took only moments for her to arrange it all while I sat, looking like a fool. I was happy Fury stepped out. At least he didn't have to see that I'd let the Black Widow nick one of my arteries.

"Well, Agent Barton, I believe this requires a minor surgery," Doctor Smith said smoothly. I wondered if anything ruffled her at all.

"Now?!" I exclaimed.

"Right now. By me. Just lay down and I'll go get some things. Don't take off the bandage, arm higher than heart, and all that. You know the drill." She stepped away to the in-room sink and proceeded to wash the blood off her hands. "Do me a favor, and go easy, all right? I have a presentation in the morning I still need to prepare for." She pulled a handful of paper towels off the wall and turned back to me. I could see her now, a woman hiding beneath the doctor garb and medical jargon.

"Presentation?" I asked, lying down.

"I'm a resident. We sign our lives away for a few years to get talked down to and cry ourselves to sleep at night. This gig pays my student loans, but it isn't conducive to me working on important things."

"So you aren't a doctor?" I asked, confused.

She snickered. "Typical agent. Don't worry your pretty little head about what I am. I'll patch you up, send you out, and don't come back until Thursday, at the earliest. A girl could use some beauty sleep."

I decided to throw a little charm at her. After all, it was my calling card and women seemed to like it. "I don't think you need a bit of beauty sleep. You're pretty gorgeous as you are."

I never expected the absolute, dead-pan look she threw at me. I might as well have said she'd been born with three eyes and a uni-boob. Scoffing, laughing, and snorting at my apparent ill attempt at making her swoon, the "resident" Dr. Smith went trotting out the door to grab some supplies. Fury leaned inside, holding his phone against his chest so the man on the other line couldn't hear.

"Barton, don't try it with her. She'll burn you."

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Ok, so this is totally finished being written, but editing is in progress. (i literally took 8 hours and banged this thing out). As i re-read it i will fix all the minor errors.

Please review! Updates are going to be FAST on this! like, within the rest of today!


	2. Chapter 2

**"Avenge Me" the prequel**

:(:):(:):

It was August. I decided to follow the Director's opinion for once and attend the latest lecture on bacon grease fires dispensed at the hands of a paltry doctor in a green scrub top. By now I was considered a "frequent flier". Let me tell you, being a frequent anything at the Pop Tent twenty minutes from your SHIELD crash pad is not a good thing nor is it something to strive for. But I got it regardless of what I had to say about it.

I waited four hours and twenty three minutes for my lecture to start. Fury drove, seeing as my left hand was nigh on useless. I blamed him for the sudden assault on my skin cells. I never wanted a live-in roommate, but I had the good fortune, so he says, of being one of the three people he trusted in life. Once I tried to figure out who the other two were, but gave up soon after he shot me with that evil eye he gets. Bacon wasn't even part of my midnight snack plan. He'd been sweating out a mission in Lithuania for the past sixteen days, and he wanted good old American crap food. I offered to cook.

I picked the fabric on the wrap he'd placed over my burn wound. It was still wet from the cool water we'd soaked my hand in. Hopefully it was only a second degree burn. He doubted it.

A nurse called us over by five a.m. and deposited me in veterinary exam room number three. While he enjoyed the latest issue of _Automotive_ magazine, a cool six years since it was issued, I followed the scrubs to my new digs. Lidocaine injection? No. That crap burned. Tetanus shot? Yes. I usually got one every six months by this point. By the time I reached the next series in a long line of questions, I looked up and actually considered the woman I was talking to.

"Dr. Smith?" I asked in surprise. I hadn't seen her for five weeks, not that I hadn't been through the clinic in that time. From his chair, Fury glanced over the top of his magazine at us.

A vague recollection entered the doctor. "Oh, yeah, stab wound guy. What you do this time?" She rolled over on the stool and considered the wet bandage. This time, neither of us tried to take it off.

"Grease fire," I said.

"I thought I smelled bacon," she replied. Smiling, she felt it safe enough to unwrap. "You didn't bring any, did you?"

"Bacon?" I asked.

She nodded. "Girl's got to eat."

I scoffed. "You come over one night and I'll—AH!" I let out an involuntary scream as she none-to-gently yanked the bandage off my hand. Apparently, her attempt at being coy was only to distract me. Touché, doc.

From where he sat, Fury rumbled in his seat. A stifled chuckle passing through him like an avalanche.

"You are some kinda woman, doc." I complained.

"Yeah, well, I have enough of you government hounds to fight off every two nights. So you don't scare me." She leaned over, inspecting my palm, the better half, and the back. Grease splattered from my knuckles to my wrist in large, coalescing blisters. They looked much angrier now than they had before. "Right or left handed?"

"Left."

"Much pain?"

I winced as she poked one of my new, bubbly, skin accessories. "Only when you poke it, doc."

"Don't be a baby," she chided. "And stop calling me "doc". You aren't Bugs Bunny."

Again Fury emerged from above his reading material to watch us.

"What do I call you?" I asked.

She considered her tray of instruments, most of which were needles or scalpels should she decide to lance my wounds. "Laura." She looked at me as she said it, gauging my reaction. Her eyes were chocolate brown, lined in a splash of make-up she probably applied hours ago and never had the chance to touch up. Her hair was back today, steeped on her head in a couple rubber bands with two pens sticking out of it.

"Well, ma'am. When do you get off?" I asked.

Laura Smith stabbed a scalpel blade through the thinly stretched skin on the back of my hand. I think she enjoyed watching me squirm.

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hahahahahahaha. Oh, he does try.

Review all the chapters!


	3. Chapter 3

**"Avenge Me" the prequel**

:(:):(:):

I leaned over the front desk, letting my head rest on my arm as my booted foot kicked the bottom of the half wall. I groaned, I hurt, my head throbbed, and I didn't want to be standing. Fury was out of town to work on the Helicarrier launch and I'd been left with Agent Coulson as a roommate till he came back. Coulson liked classical music, old baseball cards, and Captain America memorabilia. He also drank the last of the milk, something I might not decide to forgive him for.

Phil laid a hand across my shoulders gently and spoke to Jamiqua. "Headache, fever, chills, spent the last month in Borneo. We backrounded him for Malaria when he came back and so far everything was negative. I know they have dengue there and we're worried about this new virus. Chika-something."

I didn't care what Phil told the woman, I just wanted to lay down, itch the massive rash spreading from my face to my feet, and make the grinding glass in my joints go away. I tried to pick my head up to find the nearest chair and lay down, but even that was too much.

"Phil?" I whispered.

Phil continued to check me in. "It's some new virus, mosquito transmission. Didn't think to look for it. Apparently it used to be rare, now it's showing up more and more."

"Phil?" I tried a second time, feeling my knees, which were on fire, begin to give way.

"This is his agent number and—Clint!"

Coulson finally realized my predicament as I slid toward him on my trip to the floor. My temporary handler grabbed me around the chest and eased me down, shouting for someone to bring a gurney. I wasn't all that bad. Besides feeling like I wanted to either die, or destroy the little devils prodding their pitch forks between every joint in my body, I was better off than my usual trips to the Pop Tent vet hospital.

"I can walk," I boldly declared.

Coulson pulled away from my face and a cascade of brown haired angel replaced him. Confused, I worked hard to bring her into focus.

"Hey—Ma'am," I said dumbly. "Dr. Laura."

"You big idiot," she replied. I could hear the smile in her voice. "He isn't dying. Phil, give me a hand, let's get him standing. Nurse, hold that door open for us. All right, you big, tough guy, on your feet! Heave!"

Two sets of hands lifted together and suddenly the blood drained from my face incredibly fast. I barely aided my own progress down the hall, carried between Phil and Laura, as they found me an exam table to pass out on. The minute I felt the ice-cold metal beneath my fingers, I peeled my shirt off and hugged it. I didn't care how I looked, it just felt too good to pass up. An equally cold hand touched my shoulder. I leaned into it, enjoying the feel.

"Agent Barton, you're dehydrated. I want to give you some fluids. Can you turn over so I can start an IV?"

I groaned.

"I know it's asking a lot, but let's strap on your big boy pants, and get to it."

Slowly, eventually, I found myself on my back, bare chested and all. The table wasn't long enough for me to lay completely on it, so my legs dangled off the sides at the knees. My neck hurt too much to turn and see whether I'd limped to the room with the doggie dental chart, or the one with the cat breeds. Laura seemed to notice and hung her face over mine. She hadn't done her hair up in the rubber bands yet. I could feel the longer strands tickling along my chest.

"It's early yet. I think I should keep you for a while. You really look put out," she said.

I glanced at the clock. One a.m. five hours until turn over and my room became a hub of dogs, cats, pigs, and parakeets looking for their own care. I'm not sure why I kept frequenting the same Pop Tent lately. Sure it was conveniently close to my apartment, but there were better, twenty-four hour hubs an extra twenty minutes down the road. I knew the answer when I looked at her. She was what Phil might call a "babe". He was nostalgic like that. He also deplored my taste in women. Bobbi Morse for one.

"Can't stay too long," I said.

"We'll figure something out."

And she was right. I'd come to realize she would always be right. If I thought she wasn't, then I was wrong, and she was still right. If I thought I was right, I was wrong, and she still was right. If we had the same opinion, she was still more right than I was.

Wracked in fever, high on aspirin to keep my pain at bay, and hooked to a slow dripping IV line, Laura Smith spent the next seven hours sitting at my head and watching me not itch into oblivion. I think it might have been around the time she decided to try out the anti-itch oatmeal dog shampoo on my hives that I admitted I liked her. It was after she found the tube of prescription strength cortisone cream I considered asking her to marry me.

My treatment lasted long past turn-over and when the veterinary crew came in that morning, they were more than a little surprised to see me staring up into the fair doctor's face with her, sleeping, back against the wall. She was a resident still and spent thirty-six hours on her feet between her morning/evening hospital duties and her late night SHIELD volunteering. Apparently one of the other Pop Tent doctor's quit, leaving her in the lurch for a few days.

Seeing the state I was in, the vet took pity on us. She helped move Laura and me to the back of the building, in the radiology room, where a long, equally cold table would go unused for the remainder of the day. I fell asleep with my head on her leg while she told me about what it took to be a clinical radiologist, something she currently strived for. I found out the difference between an intern (lower totem pole) and resident (higher totem pole), and that she planned to take a big exam soon and determine her fate as a radiologist. She wanted to settle down, but never found a man worthy to handle her schedule and dating fellow doctors hadn't panned out. Her father threatened to arrange her marriage. I simply stared up into that beautiful face of hers and tried to listen as long as I could. Eventually I fell asleep.

Later when Phil came to sneak me out the back door, he explained what the term "Pop Tent" came from. Apparently during the early SHIELD days, Howard Stark coined it. Every time he walked onto a battle field and caught sight of an army nurse, well, you get the idea. Current agents, I suppose, weren't much different from Stark back then. It sure was refreshing walking into the Pop Tent after two weeks in the field and a case of Chikungunya to see a beautiful woman waiting to make me feel better.

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for those of you who have never had the Ckicken-nugget virus, suffice to say, it SUCKS!

Review all the chapters!


	4. Chapter 4

**OMG OMG OMG, this chapter is intense!**

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 **"Avenge Me" the prequel**

I stumbled up the front steps, dragging my left leg behind me. I thought Coulson might at least get out of the car and help me inside, but he decided to giggle and park the car instead. I guess I deserved it. He told me that climbing the Chrysler building might end in disaster and, for the most part, he was wrong until the weirdo waiting at the top of it threw me off. A repelling arrow caught me half way, but I still rebounded off some scaffolding. I hit the ground eventually and there the smug SHIELD handler was with the bad guy tied up in the back of his convertible and a smile on his face. Some days I didn't know how Coulson beat me.

He offered to drive down to the Pop Tent on 86th street. I declined. The city had its benefits though I'd rather spend my time getting out of it when the opportunity provided itself. The hustle, bustle, crazy driving, thrumming life never appealed to me. I had enough of that in my day-to-day. Fury used to joke about buying me a farm one day. If he ever did, I might not leave it.

My hand reached out for the buzzer and depressed the button. The black out windows made it look like the place was abandoned for the night. The minute Jamiqua, or the alternate check in, Nurse Phyllis, opened the door all that peace and quiet changed. This clinic tended to be less busy than the others, despite its eight hour shift. I've been to some who were packed with wall-to-wall agents during busy seasons.

No one answered the first time. I hit the buzzer again and leaned into the window with my ear. I heard the thump of boots on the floor. Suddenly my agent half switched on before I even realized what happened. I scanned back to see where Coulson parked. He must have circled around back.

I grabbed the door handle and muscled it in, forgetting my possibly busted leg in the process. The door didn't give without a fight. I backed up, used the hand rail as a spring board and kicked my good leg against the lock. It took three attempts and finally, success. I burst into the front room and saw the virtual war zone almost instantly.

The dog scale on my left was covered in arterial spray. The three chairs along the side wall were thrown around the room. A body rested under two of them. I went there first, but the woman was already dead. On the right side of the front room were stacks of dog and cat food on white anchored shelves propped against the wall. Five chairs fit there, though today they too had been thrown around. A cork tack board above them had been ripped off and, I assumed, slammed against the back of another agent's head. Another dead body.

My heart sped up. Tonight Laura should be on shift. I knew that because I decided I liked her the last time I came through and we spent a romantic night and day together. I slept on her lap, she slept on my shoulder, I was covered in cortisone cream and hives, she hadn't showered in four days. I felt something click and, maybe she didn't think it did, because she laughed when I asked her out.

So maybe I knew when her shifts were, and maybe I only attneded this clinic since then, and maybe I came even for minor reasons, like the stubbed toe last week and the splinter four days before that. I think the constant being around made her warm up to me. I was still Agent Barton, that never changed, but she said it with less hostility than Jamiqua.

I wished I hadn't left my weapons in the car. I found a pen on the check-in counter which would serve for now. Jamiqua lay on the other side of the counter. I leaned over, moving the hair away from her neck to find a pulse, but instead discovered the ten inch knife wound that split her from ear to ear. It was precise, done by an expert, and severed both jugulars and carotids in a single swipe. She never had a chance.

I cursed and pulled back, wielding the Bic's ball point with the tip past my pinky and the rest in my palm. Anything could be a weapon in the right hands and I had an affinity for pens when there was nothing else. They had a balance to them, flew nicely through the air, and could cause considerable damage if used appropriately. I stalked up the hall, weapon in tow, and followed the sudden thunder of sounds emerging from the closest exam room.

There was a hard slap of hand meeting flesh followed by a choking scream. A body connected with something metallic, most likely the lift table, and a man began to shout.

"You better save him! I know you can! I don't care what they said, I don't care what you think! You don't do something you're dead! Got that?! Dead!"

I swallowed the spit forming in my mouth and slid up along the wall. The open door had a six inch crack which allowed me to peer inward at the scene playing out. I could only see two men. The one folded up at an odd angle on the floor and the one standing, covered in blood, and wielding a knife. As I watched, the knife wielder threw his fist out and connected with someone I couldn't see. The person hit the wall, glass shattered, and the door sprang open even more. I yanked back to avoid getting caught, but it was too late. .

I didn't recognize the agent, but I did know the doctor he threw around: Dr. Laura Smith.

Seeing me sent him on alert instantly. He grabbed the back of her white coat and yanked her up. Before I could stop him, her back squeezed against his chest and the bloody knife crossed her throat. Visions of seeing her end up like the nurse out front nearly made me blind with rage. Desperate, pleading eyes zeroed in on my. Laura was terrified.

"Drop it! Drop it or I'll kill her! I swear I will!" the agent screamed.

I held up my ball point. "Easy, man, it's a pen. It's just a pen. No big deal. I was just coming to sign in. Chill out for a second—"

"DROP IT!" he screamed, diving the knife into the flesh of her neck. Laura cried out in shock.

"Fine, fine, dropping it!" I said, letting my hand open.

"Don't play around with me. I know who you are! I know what you can do! Hawkeye, right? Hawkeye. The specialist. Secret agent man. No exit strategies. Nothing. Best SHIELD's got. What they send you here for? They say I cracked? They tell you that!"

Laura screamed again as the knife cut into her. I rolled forward on the balls of my feet, but the agent reeled back, dragging her with him. I vaguely wondered where exactly Coulson got off to, (I was later informed, he started a bidding war on some vintage Captain America trading cards on Ebay).

"Clint!" Laura choked on my first name. It was the first time I ever heard her use it. I held my hand out to her, hoping she understood _. Stay still, trust me, don't move._

"Hey look man, I don't know you or what's going on here. Way I see it, some guy came in and shot up the place. Did you walk into this too? Your buddy there," I slowly eased inside again, trying not to show off how badly my leg held me back. "You find him like this? Laura, she's a great doctor. Pulled me out of a lot of worse jams. I can help, but I gotta get him on the table."

The suggested story I came up with resonated in the agent who desperately looked for a way out. He slowly nodded. "Ye-yeah. Yeah. I drove the car. Dropped him off. Walked in and this place was. He's not dead!" the voice escalated, nearly screaming again, "He ain't dead, got me!"

I held my hands a little higher, moved laterally along the exam table and stood over the body on the floor. The assailant moved with me, the opposite direction, yanking Laura backwards as he went.

"Hey, I get it. It's fine. Laura's the best doctor here. You know, she's done an extra four years of med stuff, right? Trying to be a board certified doc. Takes a lot of extra training. She's dealt with agents like us for over a year, She's got this. No one better to take your friend too. I'm just going to reach down here and turn him over. We need to get him on the table."

The man on the floor didn't move or breathe. From the .45 hole in the back of his head, I assumed he was also dead, despite what his buddy wanted to believe. Grief could drive men over the edge. I'd seen it happen time and time again in the field. Maybe one day it might happen to me, but it hadn't yet. I was lucky.

"Watch—watch his head, Hawkeye. Careful with him, he ain't good. He ain't dead."

"I know," I said gently, pandering to him. I could see in the reflection of the broken glass shards his hand slacken on the knife at Laura's throat. Taking the dead man's shoulder and thigh, I rolled him out from under the exam table. I placed my hand along his collar, and looked around the rest of him hoping I might find one of his firearms. I didn't. Desperately, I spun my head toward the living agent.

"He's alive!" I tried to sound shocked. "He's not breathing. We've got to get him up. Look, I got a busted leg, I can't lift him. You want him to live, help me!"

I shifted back, grabbed hold of the dead man's legs and made a big show of lifting. Franticly, the knife dropped from Laura's neck and he sprung toward me instead. The minute he took hold of the dead man's arms, I launched forward from the balls of my feet and tackled him. The man roared. He threw me sideways with amazing strength and came down at me with the blade. I grabbed his arm, deflecting it down and rammed my knee into his solar plexus. Air flew out of him with an "oof" of exhalation. At the same time, he grabbed me by the shirt front and wrestled me to my feet. We spun together like a couple of dancers and he cracked my back over the edge of the exam table. The knife came across my chest, separating a strip of flesh as it went. I cried out, wrapped my fingers around the table, and threw my body into his. We hit the wall together like two hammers colliding.

Clawing against his fingers to get the knife loose, I screamed at the stunned doctor. "RUN!"

Lithe as a deer, she bounded off without hesitation. At least she had good sense.

The agent clubbed me in the side of the head and I collapsed against the back of the lift table. The world spun around in jagged circles as my body fought to keep me alive. My good leg kicked out, connecting with his knee. His hand wrapped around my neck and together we went crashing into the floor tile. My face rebounded and blood gushed from a new cut under my eye. I'd sealed my hand around his wrist and twisted, turning it backward until I could hear the bone snap. He screamed and the knife hit the ground between us.

I clambered for it. His elbow came down on and swept my chin from the bottom up. My neck popped with the force of it and for a second time I felt too stunned to move. He was strong, I granted the guy that much. Natasha handled this one-on-one combat better than I did, though she taught me a lot about dirty fighting. I preferred to stay at a distance, sniper, and call shots. No reason to get my face busted up if I could just kill everyone from four hundred yards out.

I heard the scrape of the blade along the floor tile and knew he must have it again. Reflexively, I threw my hands up just in time to stop the downward progression of the knife searching out my left eye socket. I didn't have to hold out very long. Suddenly the man's hands slackened. His body heaved, pitched over to the side, and I heard three pop-pop-pops erupted in the enclosed space. Coulson. About time.

"Clint?! Clint, can you hear me?"

I could hear, but seeing became the problem. I forced my eyes to try and focus on the face swirling over mine. Two cold hands captured my ears and steadied me. I blinked.

"Laura?" I asked.

The hands were shaking. I smelled burnt gunpowder on them, saw the wide, expressive eyes, and the pale drawn face. She was scared out of her mind.

"I can't believe you did that! How did you know? Oh my God, you're bleeding!" The hands pulled away from my face to palpate over my chest. I could tell it wasn't too deep, but the line of shredded flesh did stretch from the middle of my right chest down to my left ninth rib. I tried to sit up, but she wouldn't have that and pushed me right back down.

"Is he dead?" I had to know. I'd never seen her shoot before so had no notion whether she'd even hit him.

Terrified, she looked over at the slumped assailant. Ignoring her pressure to keep me down, I got up on my elbows and rolled toward him. There were two bullet holes in the side of his face. The third was dangerously near to hitting me. She'd pitched the gun beneath the table.

"Hand me that." I instructed.

She eyed the weapon.

"It's not a good idea leaving a loaded, jacked, firearm there. Hand it to me." I told her. Carefully, she complied. I locked on the safety, ejected the bottom clip, and emptied the chamber. The bullet and clip, I chucked into the hallway should either of the dead men flanking me decide to come to life.

"Outside, red convertible. Agent Coulson. Get him." I instructed. Laura scrambled to her feet and left instantly. She never fought me on the decision to take off, a novel prospect. And she handled a gun fairly well for a newbie, which only aided in her attractiveness. I thought more about how much I wanted to just steal the woman off to Vegas and never come back than what I'd just walked into.

By the time she returned with Coulson, I had already made it to my feet. I sat on one of the exam room chairs and pressed a wet paper towel beneath my eye. A small smirk fired Coulson's way.

"Before you say anything, I didn't shoot anyone," I said wittily.

"Can I take you anywhere?" Phil asked.

Laura returned to me. She knelt down, spreading my shirt apart to look at the torn flesh beneath. Concerned, Coulson finished checking the bodies and went down beside her. I knew it wasn't bad.

"Well, ma'am, it's like this. I was in a fight with King Kong and I twisted my leg up in a pile of rebar I accidentally ran into after falling about fifteen floors off the Chrysler building. Then, you know, a guy slashed my chest, threw me against the floor, and I saved the day."

Laura looked up, her chocolate brown eyes diving into mine. "You big dummy!" she exclaimed. She leaned into me, pressing her lips into mine. It was the best form of pain meds I'd ever had. Like any good, first kiss it was over too fast. Shocked at what she'd done, where she'd done it, Laura pulled away from me. Doctor Smith returned, and suddenly I became the patient again. Our moment ended. Having any moment at all, gave me a little smidge of hope.

* * *

He is so cute:) I just love how hard he tries.

and what awesome action, right? Go Laura for finding a gun!

Review all the chapters!


	5. Chapter 5

And like that...the end...

* * *

 **"Avenge Me" the prequel**

The mission had gone fine, until suddenly, it changed. Like an east wind blowing down from the arctic, pushing a storm unlike you'd ever felt through the eaves of your very soul. It all happened so fast.

Natasha Romanov backed me up this time. A lot of agents didn't trust her, but I did. I knew what she could do if she had a mind for it, and I knew she was also loyal. She paid her debts, and right now, and the foreseeable future, Natasha owed me the biggest debt of all. I let her live. I had her dead to rights, and I made a different call. She never knew why, hell, I couldn't answer it either. But in that simple act I'd gained a partner I never imagined. She'd die defending me.

Usually we weren't in New York for high profile missions and usually we didn't do simple guard detail. This special case involved a controversial international diplomat known as Victor von Doom. He owned a small country in some part of the world no one knew, or cared, about until he came crawling off of it. Frankly, the man was evil. He could also defend himself. Fury wanted to make a big show of SHIELD handling a United Nations meeting, so he sent in the big guns. All the standard face-men were in attendance, including the director himself. Natasha and I were shadow players. Our agency knew we were there, and that alone kept them on their toes.

No one expected trouble, then trouble found us. I didn't want to kill five random insurgents who swept through the halls, decked in enough artillery to level a Midwestern town, but I did my job because that's what I do. Then one minute I saw the sniper Fury missed. She came at him on his blind side, literally, and with a good enough vantage to strip the Director off of the planet. I never gave it a second thought. I threw myself behind his back and took a bullet right to the chest.

Controlled hysteria followed. Where to bring me. Call an ambulance. Pop Tent's wouldn't do. Needed a full on surgery team. Helicarrier too far. New York General. Load me up. Patch me up. Numb me up.

The last part came too late for my taste. I could feel that .50 caliber had worked its way through my lung and I admit to screaming more than once. I fell into a daze. The world swirled around me and I watched it cruise by like an inactive participant. I stopped being a person, and started being a patient. Sometimes the transition is slow. You get coddled, made to think you're in control of your own care, that people were just there to serve you. When you become full on patient, like I did then, you forfeit all say in what happens to you. The staff has one goal. Keep your stupid hide alive.

"Watch it! Make room! Move it! Slide him in here! Get him on the bed! One-two-"

Over a dozen hands lifted me off the ambulance stretcher and into the bed. Somewhere along the way all my clothes had been cut off me. I lay, naked and bare, as the whole world came to inspect how I'd survived the initial shot to the chest and ended up in their ER. I could see Natasha hanging back by the curtain. She wondered whether I'd live or not. I imagine if I died, she'd be moving on, find some new organization to follow around, or simply go off and live for herself. She'd ridden in the ambulance with me.

"Get radiology in here! This guy's got lead in him, I want to know where. Get the oxygen hooked to the central line and off the mini tank. How many IV's running? More. Get more. Dolan, get that femoral cath in. Simmons, work on the jugular. I want major blood crossmatch and then I need no less than two-liters of O-negative stat!"

Someone in a white coat barked orders from the end of the bed. I watched him. Energy and blood continued to drain out of me. I thought I might wait for Fury to show up, or Coulson before I walked down that tunnel of light. I figured if this was the bullet that killed me, it might be better to spare them the sight.

Then, I saw her.

Radiology. I heard the word pass by in the hundreds of others all shooting around me. The hair got me first. It was pulled back, stacked in a tight bun at the back of her head with two or three pens skewering through it. I asked once why she did that to herself. Poised over my splintered hand at the time, she explained how much she lost pens. Every time she went to grab one out of her pocket, it wasn't there to find. She started putting them in her hair. The busier it was, the more she had stuck up in that bun, because she lost in there too.

I tried to call Laura's name but a choke of blood came up instead. A team of hands rolled me over. A vacuum tube suctioned out my mouth. Someone replaced the blood filled oxygen mask.

"CLINT!" a woman's voice exclaimed. It didn't belong to Natasha.

I looked up and there she stood. The angel face and chocolate eyes. God, I loved her.

"What happened? No, don't move, just lay there!" She batted my hand away as it tried to lift three pounds of IV tubing to touch her face. I never knew a woman to be so stubborn. I could have anyone I wanted. Within reason. I had a reputation in SHIELD, and not a good one. She most likely knew all about that. She probably didn't know that I'd left the other girls behind after that night and day we spent together, sleeping on the radiology table. I wondered if she even gave me a second thought during her day. Her reaction to me now, gave me a second spark of hope.

"Laura," I whispered through the breath hitching in my chest. I felt the cold splash of liquid scrub coating me then the jam of a needle attempting to relieve the pent up air trapped around my lungs.

"Laura, you know him?"

She turned away from me, offering a clipped answer I didn't hear. I was her . . . what? We didn't date, unless you counted the nights I drove over to the clinic bearing midnight dinners or boxes of doughnuts and coffee. We didn't go out, unless you counted the two hours between her late night SHIELD shift and the one at New York General, where I drove her into the city so she could sleep in the passenger seat. We didn't spend weekends together, unless you count the times I brought her to the gun range, teaching her to adequately defend herself, making her feel empowered without me should this stupid life I led get me killed.

I don't know what we were. She didn't either. I aimed to clear all that up.

"Marry me," I whispered. My hand gripped hers, squeezing hard.

Laura spun around, wide eyes twinkling down at me. "What?!"

I squeezed again, trying to keep conscious. Someone decided to probe my gunshot wound with a finger, apologizing and checking depth while I screamed. Laura clung against me. Tears filling her eyes.

"Marry me," I proposed a second time. I wanted to get the words out. I wanted to give her something to hold onto in case I disappeared into that surgical suite and never came back again.

Her mouth dropped open a little. Yeah, I said it, right here, publically, in front of everyone she shared her daylight hours with. Shocked doctors and nurses shot glances toward her, wondering what might come out of her mouth next. I suppose this might be the first time a guy up and proposed on his death bed.

Her expression changed, softened, and her face came a little closer to mine. "Do you know how many of you government stooges come in here and ask to marry me?"

I flipped a grin. "Yeah, but I . . . I'm saying it sober."

Laura might have laughed if my situation was less serious. "I don't accept it. Not now. It isn't right. You are going to have to live, Clint Francis Barton, and then you need to ask me the right way. I'm talking on your knees, box of chocolates, and if I don't feel some sparks, well it is just not happening."

She knew my middle name. We were close like that. Saving her life, holding her as SHIELD arrived at the Veterinary Pop Tent and cleaned the bodies away drew us closer than I could have hoped for. She admitted to me then, that the way to a doctor's heart included food. Suddenly I stopped turning up with minor injuries, and started arriving bearing her dinners. I was afraid she'd accidentally shoot me one day if I didn't teach her right, and that started up too. It was a slow, gradual romance building over twelve months. Laura would get her degree soon. She could take a job wherever she wanted and maybe even decide to settle down with an arrow-jockey like me.

I took my hand out of hers and finally reached her cheek. I rested there for a while, letting her breath dance down my skin. Natasha watched us from the door. She liked to say it was her who brought us together. After all, the first time I arrived at the clinic was because a knife wound she'd given me as the Black Widow. She liked Laura. More than that, Natasha liked me with her. In her opinion I did less stupid things when I could be around the doctor.

Coulson and Fury suddenly shot into the doorway with worried looks. Coulson's sleeves were rolled up past his elbows and splattered in red. I had a vague memory of him poised over my chest, telling me to hold on. Fury's arm was in a sling. I guess the bullet must have been a through and through. Laura was forced back with the others as the doctors rushed me out. Prep work was over. My oxygen stats began to plummet and it didn't take long before I lost consciousness.

I found out later, the bullet took off a piece of my left atrium. Apparently that usually killed people. I'm not sure what kept me alive. I liked to tell Laura I lost a piece of my heart the day I asked to marry her. She usually laughs it off. It took three weeks to get released from the hospital, but when I did, Coulson waited for me outside.

He stood beside Lola, his vintage red convertible. Natasha leaned on the hood with a bundle of flowers and box of Ghirardelli, caramel-only chocolates. They were Laura's favorite. I made the mistake of getting a mixed batch one day and watched her sort out the little yellow foiled ones and hand back the rest. Fury exited his own sedan and strode over with a ring box in his hand.

I glared at the three of them. "You know, I could have done all this myself too."

Every single one of them laughed.

Fury put the ring box in my pocket, Natasha left the flowers and chocolate on the passenger seat, and Coulson, shockingly, held out the keys to Lola. It came with a steady warning that should I dare to put so much as a scratch in the paint, I could expect a larger hole in my heart than the one I recently got patched. Immediately the three of them got into Fury's sedan and drove off together.

Dazed, confused, and wondering what the Hell to do now, I turned at the sound of someone saying my name.

Laura stood just outside the doorway of the hospital with her phone in one hand. "Clint? How did you even get my phone number? I told you, my residency's over, I need to pack—"

I don't know how the others did it, and I didn't care to ever ask. I strode across the parking lot, grabbed Laura Amelia Smith in my arms dipped her halfway to the concrete and gave her a Hollywood movie kiss. She needed to pack, I needed to rest, I did not need to carry her across the concrete side walk, throw her into the passenger seat, and tear off down the street but that is exactly what I did. She might have tried her hardest to fight me off, not let herself fall in love, but we both knew the truth.

Admiring the ring on her hand, Laura looked over at me from the passenger seat of the classic car. "I didn't just go through ten years of schooling to be an army wife, Clint."

I smiled. "Nope."

"And I am not just going to give up my entire career so you can go off and save the world."

"Don't expect you to."

"You are not allowed to buy the groceries."

I laughed.

"I am serious! You can cook, but Clint, we cannot live on bacon cheeseburgers and fried cheese curds. I don't care how much you love them."

I nodded, acquiescing. "Yes, ma'am. You're the boss."

A smile flitted across her face. I slowed for a traffic light and looked over to see it. She was beautiful all the time. When she smiled, that beauty became something else entirely. I wanted to know what made her laugh, if she liked trucks over vans, if she preferred a night in or a night out. How did she dance. How did she like to be kissed. What were we going to do, together, for the rest of our lives. I knew a lot of those answers already, but I wanted to hear them again from the lips of my fiancé. My wife.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked, admiring her long enough for the line of taxis behind us to lay on their horns. Apparently the light changed.

"My parents," she said, laughing now. "And what they are going to think when you show up at our door, or Thanksgiving dinner, or when Natasha's your best man, and my maid of honor at the wedding."

In-laws.

Well, I guess I couldn't think of every speed bump.

* * *

bahahahahahaha. Talk about the best friends ever. We all know Clint couldn't do it alone.

He got to drive Lola

Laura laying down the law, and Clint totally accepting it.

I hope you've enjoyed this incredibly fast little romp. It reminds me a lot of how I spun an OC into my Green Hornet series. How fun!

please review and tell me how you liked it all. I'll be going back and adjusting all the typos as I go along.


	6. Chapter 6

ok, so i lied. and this wasn't over...

* * *

 **"Avenge Me" the prequel**

:(:):(:):

I sat on the end of the bed, staring at the multicolored chart in my hands with a mixture of aw, fascination, and abject horror. You heard it right, "abject". I learned a new word. Before I got married, I never knew such things as fertility charts existed. I knew about tampons, only because most of my supply packs carried them for emergency gunshot wound plugs. This was a whole new level of husband I didn't know that I could live up to.

Laura appeared from our joint bathroom, new concept number fourteen if I wanted to keep a list, and leaned in to doorway brushing her teeth. She noticed my curiosity but for my wellbeing said nothing about it. I never knew having kids came with such rigorous instruction. In the past I considered men to be part one, women part two, in a two-part miniseries with the finale involving babies. How wrong I was.

"According to this, if I can read it like a Russian building schematic, you should have been pregnant in something called "Pes"," I said, squinting at the letters.

Laura laughed so hard a glob of toothpaste and spit hit the hardwood floor. Clamping a hand over her mouth she promptly disappeared to rinse out her mouth.

"You know, I don't get why that doc thinks we need all this. I say we just keep going until something happens and be surprised one day."

She re-emerged, picked up her spit wad with a tissue and dropped it into the trash. First order of business involved approaching me, removing the chart from my hands, rotating it, and giving it back. Apparently "Pes" was "Sep". The world made sense again. Dejected, I dropped the chart on the bed beside me.

"Seriously, do we need all this?" I asked.

Kneeling down in front of me, she placed her hands on my knees and gave me that motherly look that God-help-me, shot straight to my heart. Laura was a good woman. Better than a man like me ever deserved to get in this life. I don't think I'll ever understand how she decided to marry me. I will never figure out how the bullet her father shot at me missed by four inches and shattered a hanging plant on the family front porch.

Her mother cried.

They hate me.

"How often do you get to be home?" she asked.

The knowledge stung. Already whatever argument I might formulate became invalid. "In a month? Or a year?"

She smiled. "You big goof. We've been through this. Nick said he'd give you time off if we had a baby. We both want to try. And we've done it your way for a while now."

I sighed a little. She won. I guess I didn't want to face the truth the doctor brought up. There might be something wrong with her or me. Some reason keeping us from getting what we both wanted. I never exactly saw myself as a father, but with the prospect before me it was all I could think about. Something not just mine, but ours. A boy to raise, a girl to dress up, morals to instill. I wanted a chance to give a Barton child something better than the Hell I grew up with in life.

Laura could see the dark thoughts cruising up in me. She reached forward and stroked her hands along the sides of my face. Our foreheads pressed together.

"It'll be all right," she whispered in that perfect, quiet way she had. "You need to go. Natasha's waiting. I'll always be here when you get back."

I tipped my chin forward and kissed her. She kissed me back. I grabbed her behind the shoulders and one-arm lifted her into the bed. The chart went dropping down to the floor while I decided to give us one more go 'round before heading out to my mission with Tasha. Luckily for me, Laura willingly obliged.

Natasha, though, should never be kept waiting. It wasn't long before I hastily reassembled my clothing and jogged down the staircase, feeding my arms into my vest and zipping the leather closed. I nodded a hello to my SHIELD partner.

Natasha wasn't stupid, even if she pretended to be on some missions. The minute she saw me, she blew out a large, pink gum bubble and snapped it back in. "You're fast."

"Oh, shut up." I said, hitting her shoulder as I passed. Natasha laughed to herself and sauntered out behind me.

Fury, in all his wisdom and hilarity, had bought me that farm out in the middle of nowhere to raise the family I might one day be the patriarch of. He backrounded the entire place personally, placed the sale under a pseudonym not associated with any current operative names, and turned it over to me. We were forced into it not long after Laura and I married. We enjoyed a honeymoon in Tahiti when an old mark I'd tracked down recognized me. He followed us back to the hotel, broke in, and I woke up with the man's gun in my face and Laura wailing on him with a night stand. My marriage was private already, after that it became trade secret number one and Laura resumed her maiden name for work.

Convincing her parents to keep quiet came as no difficulty. Jackson Jamison Smith, her Colonel Sanders father, and owner of the country's largest egg producing empire, wrote me off the minute I showed up on his front porch to introduce myself. Apparently, I made a few cardinal mistakes. I didn't ask him to marry Laura. I wasn't a lawyer. I never graduated high school. Worst of all, I worked for a democrat. I didn't know that Nick Fury had any party obligations, but as far as Jackson Jamison Smith concerned himself, Fury had one eye, he was black, and he worked for the government. Case closed.

Her mother, Margaret, had no better opinion. She drank a lot of high balls while I stayed around, relegated me to the basement, occasionally locked me out of the house, and somehow I ended up with food poisoning. I was the only one to end up with food poisoning.

"When do I get little Natasha?"

I glanced over behind the shade of my sunglasses. "What makes you think we're naming her that?"

She grinned. "Oh, you are." She pulled open the door and slipped into the passenger seat of my truck. Her knees propped straight up on the dash as always. I tried to correct her once. She threw an extra wad of gum in her mouth, blew one giant bubble, and tacked it to the end of my nose. I gave up and climbed into the seat next to her. She chewed gum to hide her accent. It didn't come out often, but some days she just couldn't help it.

"So when she getting here?" Natasha asked.

I slid the truck into drive. Fury planned to meet us at the head of the river north of town with a helicopter. I'd pick the truck up later when I drove back in.

"When's who getting where?"

Her eyes rolled. She pushed back the top of her sweatshirt. "Your kid. You're trying to have a kid. Laura already told me, so stop playing dumb. Is she pregnant already? Is she not? You haven't shown up with that stupid smile on your face, so I assume she isn't. You've been back and forth from home for three months already. I don't get what the big—"

"We're having problems." I flat-out stated. My voice was harder than I wanted it to be, but she was pushing me and I didn't like to get pushed.

Natasha realized the line she crossed. She avoided apologies the way she avoided lip gloss or tequila. Instead she resorted to dropping her feet from the dash and rolling up her gum in a piece of paper. Some days I wondered how this woman could kill a man more ways with her hands than with a pocket knife.

"What kind of problems?" She asked, dropping her voice.

I shrugged, still mad at the thought. Angry that I admitted to it. Some things I liked to stay private but Natasha could always get that information out of me without ever trying. "I don't know. This doc in town's filling her head with all this stuff. Has charts about when we gotta have sex. I never heard about this stupid crap before. You know anything about it?" I looked over, but she shook her head frantically as if the very idea appalled her.

"Yeah, well I don't either. I'm worried something's up and she doesn't want to say."

"With her?"

I nodded and she grew quiet. We could spend an entire mission together and never say a word. She was like that sometimes. Despite that, two years of working together gave me some sense to know when she was being quiet just to think or she decided to hide something. Laura and I, as far as I knew, didn't have any secrets. Natasha was different, and I learned to live with that.

Frustrated more about myself than the conversation, I shrugged. "I don't know what we're even thinking trying to have a kid. Laura's at the hospital sixty hours a week, whether she has to be or not. I'm out with you over half the year. What kinda life is that? It's for the best. Someone just telling us it isn't supposed to—"

"You're an idiot."

Surprised at the hostility I spun around to her.

"Of course you're supposed to have kids. Everyone should be able to if they want. It'll be hard. Big whoop. Shooting people isn't exactly easy so stop complaining and go get your sperm checked or something."

My mouth dropped open slightly. For a while I forgot I was driving until the rumble strips on the side of the road reminded me to steer in my own lane. I jerked the big diesel straight again, but continued to peer over at her.

"Did you seriously just say that? Nat, you hate kids! The last time a little kid came up to you, you spent four hours telling me how much they smelled and how much it annoyed you."

Her arms were folded, warning number one. Her knees were crossed. Warning number two. Her face retreated into the hoodie of her sweatshirt. Warning number three. She was all set and ready to bite my head clear off if I didn't take a step back and lay off her.

Therefore, I continued to poke.

"It's not like it's your life. I don't see what the big deal is. Besides, us having a baby means you're in the field by yourself again for at least a month till we're settled in. I would figure you'd be rooting against us."

I decided from that moment on to heed warnings one, two, and most importantly three. Natasha didn't care that the punch she smashed into my jaw chipped my tooth, sent the truck into a tailspin down the drainage ditch, or that none of us had airbags. Neither did wrenching her shoulder out of its socket and fracturing her knuckle bother her in the least. She'd made her point, I learned my lesson, and the two of us perched on the upturned truck bed waiting for Fury to come around and pick us up.

I learned something new about my partner of two years that day. She couldn't have kids. Apparently Black Widows got sterilized as part of their training, something I'm sure Fury was privy too and he declined to pass the info along. If I wanted to have a baby, Natasha wanted to play the cool aunt. She'd planned it out. Dwelled on it. Brewed little schemes involving snipe hunts, trips to Disney, and knife throwing in the back yard. When we left the mini Barton with her, she anticipated spoiling our offspring with every candy imaginable, late night movies, and survival training in the woods behind my farm house. Sitting on the old truck bed, nursing my sore jaw, popping her shoulder back in, and waiting on Director Fury the two of us did a lot of connecting I didn't realize we needed.

We went on the mission together anyway. Two months of slogging through Rio de Janeiro in December, their hottest month, wasted on trick leads, useless intel, and crappy hotels. I got sick, twice, on street meat and Natasha landed flat on her back sporting the latest jungle virus. All I could think of in the weeks of heat, sweat, grime, barking dogs, pasty tourists, and dying streets was getting back home to Laura.

I called her in the airport. Our cover stories were over by that point and I felt the risk well worth the reward. I held the payphone with my sleeve, not daring to risk my life on whatever stick encased its outer surface. It took fifteen dollars worth of foreign cash, begging, bartering, and slamming the phone into the wall, but the connection finally made it through.

Laura's voice brought a ray of sunlight through the dank dirt-caked windows. From across the ticket line, Natasha watched me carefully. She must have seen the change and winked.

"Hey, boss," I said it in Spanish first, then forced a correction.

"Clint?!" She exclaimed. I never knew why she was surprised to hear my voice on the other line. No one else called her from blocked numbers.

"Hey, we're leaving the airport in a few unless the duct tape falls off the wing. We'll touch down in—"

"Clint, listen, I can't wait. I thought I could, but I can't. Did Nick tell you?!" I heard passion in her voice, like news waiting to explode through the phone. I hadn't heard from Fury in over five weeks. A local branch run by Dale Mickelson headed the operation to nowhere.

"The Director? No, Laura, what's going on? Is everything all right there?"

Natasha finished in line and sauntered over, chewing her gum like a cow might gnaw cud. She only didn't it to annoy me. Leaning in she said, "Hi sis!"

"Is Natasha there?"

I nodded, though she couldn't see me. "Yeah, what's this all ab—"

"Clint, I'm pregnant!"

I think I must have blacked out. In fact, I'm sure I did. By the time I came around again, I was sitting at the Miami airport, ten hours after listening to that phone call, wondering what just happened. Natasha's bag rested next to my leg, but the woman wasn't there. I looked around for her, dazed, confused, and wondering how the hell I managed to get out of one country and into another without remembering anything in between. I spotted her sauntering over in that boyish way she adopted whenever she wanted to look natural and less like a femme fetale. She extracted something from her "Miami Go!" bag and strung it out between her fingers. It was a baby onesie with the words "My daddy went to Florida and all I got was this stupid shirt" on it.

Obviously pleased with herself, Natasha shifted her gum to a corner of her mouth and turned the baby suit over. On the back an even more clever saying read "Don't worry, I got him something too!" in large, brown, bubble letters. Natasha laughed.

"I saw it and I just couldn't pass it up." She replaced it in the bag, sat beside me, and dropped the bundle into my lap. "Are you back in the land of the living?"

I couldn't say anything.

"I know. Shock. You never told me you two did the fertility treatments."

I still said nothing. My eyes drifted down to the first piece of baby clothes I'd ever held.

"I thought it was just something going on with poor timing or bad luck. You never told me you'd been trying for over a year, or about the IVF."

Given her reaction to my wanting to give up on having kids in general, at the time I thought it safer not to go into the details. After the first few months of getting nowhere fast, we went to see a friend of hers in the fertility side of the hospital. I wasn't shooting blanks, but I wasn't exactly a prime donor either. Laura's cycles or whatever they were, weren't normal. The doc suggested IVF. We tried it, five times. Twice it took, and twice I let the excitement of being a dad fill me up until I couldn't even handle my day-to-day anymore. Twice I rushed Laura to the ER in the middle of the night and held her against my chest as we lost them both. Nothing in this world prepared me for waking up to my wife, screaming, sitting in a pool of blood. When it happened the second time, I felt part of myself just shrivel up and die. We decided to stop IVF and just try something else. I never told anyone about the miscarriages. Not Natasha, Fury, or even Coulson.

"You know, you can tell me stuff like that. If you need to," Natasha said.

"What. Just. Happened." I drew, enunciating every word.

She smiled, stacked her feet on the rolling bag she'd packed and leaned on my arm. "Laura said she's having a baby. She told Fury to tell you, but he wanted it to be a surprise, so he didn't. You freaked out and didn't talk, so I told her you were so happy, you had a seizure. I think it was mostly true. I put you in a wheel chair and told the flight attendant you were shot by an insurgent in Iraq. She believed the brain damage story and helped me get you off the plane. Also gave me a spare bag of these." Natasha produced a bag of animal crackers and dropped them in my lap.

"Congrats, Poppa Barton."

I was going to be a dad. I hoped I was going to be a dad. I couldn't bear to watch Laura go through one more miscarriage.

I'll confess, I vomited in the first trashcan I found. Natasha watched me and laughed.

This time I didn't have any reason to worry. I watched my little boy grow up on the five inch ultrasound image every two weeks for the next seven months. Natasha hung on my back as we decided to find out the sex and the woman told me we were having a son. Fury came over to the baby naming party and warned me that if I ever had a Clint Barton II he would deposit me in Kosovo butt naked. That night Pride of the Yankees came on t.v., the title character played by Gary Cooper.

Laura was hooked and only a few months later, our boy came into this world a whopping eight pounds and seven ounces of Cooper Nickolas Barton.

* * *

Clint blacking out... I just love it :D

I really like the idea of him and Laura having a hard time to have kids. After all, I think everyone likes to assume it's something that just happens so fast, and unfortunately for many people (and many very good, close friends of mine) it isn't true. So i liked pushing this boundary a bit. Besides, who better to lean on than Natasha? UGH the tragedy of it!

I miiiight be done now. I recommend adding this to a story alert, just in case.

Please review!


	7. Chapter 7

ye be warned...this is going to hurt...

* * *

 **"Avenge Me" the prequel**

:(:):(:):

The mission turned out, as one might construe, and success. The bad guy had been caught by yours truly, Natasha walked away unscathed, and I had been slammed into the side of a brick building with enough force to snap my wrist. One of the field Pop Tents on the other side of LA fixed me up and Fury felt I deserved a trip home. I wasn't about to disagree. Laura reached a little over five months into baby number five and I wanted to get home to her and Coop more than anything in the world. Natasha planned to spoil my, now kindergarten aged, boy and give me and boss ma'am a chance to sleep in. No one in their right mind declined such an offer.

I walked into the house, nursing the cast adorning half of my left forearm. Natasha stood at my right side, guiding me in. It wasn't like I had a broken leg, she just couldn't help poking fun at me some days. All right, most days. I entertained her good will and edged the front door shut behind us. I called ahead and let Laura know we were on our way sometime earlier that day. I also told her not to wait up. We didn't get off the plane until midnight and the drive from the airport home took at least two hours. All I wanted was to sneak upstairs, kiss my little boy, and jump in bed.

Having kids never came easy for us. We lost two babies, Lillian and Callie, at six months of pregnancy after five attempts at IVF. Cooper came as a complete, welcome, surprise. He kicked like an angry mule the entire pregnancy. The birth went fantastic. I even had the time off to see it first hand, pass out in the labor/delivery room, break my nose, and regain consciousness in time to cut Cooper's umbilical cord. I admit it, I cried more than my newborn baby. Natasha said I was being ridiculous, but I saw a tear in her eye whether she cared to admit it or not. Fury visited us in the hospital bearing a baby blanket. I never knew him capable of a tender touch. I guess babies changed a lot of people.

After Cooper came thrashing into the world, I was hooked. I wanted more. A whole football team of them. I wanted a herd of babies with my DNA running crazy all over the Barton family farm. For my benefit, Laura agreed. We started right away, and taking hold of a great run, she got pregnant the year after Cooper. We were ecstatic. Fury was not. I needed time off, and he wouldn't give it. Laura and I both knew after the trouble from the first two, Laura risked losing this new one anytime in the last trimester. I wanted to make sure I could be there just in case the worst happened. I never told anyone about losing those first two babies. Admitting it to him, hurt.

His entire expression changed then. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but not sure what. There weren't many things you can say to someone who suffered through two miscarriages. It took a bit of doing, but somehow he managed to give me four weeks off. It felt like winning the lottery.

Baby Natalia came screaming into the world nine months later. Natasha had been away, taking up my slack in the field. We didn't tell her about our fist, full term little girl because we wanted to surprised her at the airport one day. A baby named after her. We both loved the idea and knew she would too. Keeping a secret like that wasn't easy. Natasha was the queen of rooting out information wherever it might hide and she had become an expert about getting it from me. There were a solid three months before last trimester where Nat and I enjoyed a respite in West Berlin. Every single day she pried me about where my mind was. I could only sit there and grin.

Natalia died at seven weeks of age. We don't know why. She was perfect, healthy, beautiful blue eyed baby with my hair, her mother's ears, and ten perfect toes and fingers. The doctors labeled it SIDS as if it somehow would make us feel better to have a reason that literally meant nothing. We never told Natasha about her. It hurt us too much to think about. After Natalia, we stopped trying. The heartache broke us.

This time around, Natasha found out by chance. We didn't plan Laura's surprise pregnancy and after so many difficulties in the past, we tried to not think about it as seriously as with Cooper and Natalia. She sent me a text one day, letting me know the test result. Natasha had been holding my phone and she almost lost her mind.

"MINE!" she boldly declared, texting Laura frantically. "This one is mine! Little girl. I know it! Named after me." She shot a narrowed gaze at me. "And don't you dare try and disagree."

I wanted to tell her then, but didn't have the words. As hard as it is for someone to find a kind word for parents who had lost three babies in five years, it was even harder for a parent to talk about it. She seemed so happy. She couldn't haven't her own and over time decided to live vicariously through our own good fortune. I wondered if this time was going to be different.

Walking into our house, all Natasha wanted to do was go upstairs and poke the growing belly. Laura never dissuaded her, despite the obvious disconnect I saw in my wife with the child growing day by day. Neither of us wanted to get too attached. It was a horrible prospect. We learned to live with it.

The scream split the air the minute our front door shut. Natasha launched backward against me. She reached for her gun, she'd taken it off and left it unloaded in the cab. My heart plummeted right down to my boots.

"CLINT!" Laura screamed again. It came from upstairs. I pushed away from my long time partner and thundered up the steps, taking them two, three at a time. The entire way my heart thudded harder and harder. I knew that sound. I knew the way she called to me now was the same way she'd done three times before. I felt an invisible knife dig its way into my middle and twist my guts around it.

"Laura!" I cried.

"Here!"

I turned in the hallway, rushing for the bathroom. I pushed through the half-opened door and squinted past the bright lights. Laura lay along the tile floor. Blood coated from the toilet seat to where she'd dragged herself against the doorway. I dropped down beside her and pulled my wife into my lap.

"The baby . . ." she sobbed. Her hands hovered away from her. She wasn't sure what to do with them.

My arms tightened around her shoulders. My entire body began to shake. "It's ok. It'll be ok." I chanted against her.

At my back, Natasha arrived. She'd stopped at the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife from the block on the counter. I could see the blade reflecting along her arm. Seeing the utter carnage of the bathroom floor, I don't know what possibly could have gone through her mind. A very small, quiet voice whispered my name in the form of a question.

Trying to remain calm for the three of us, I looked up at my partner. Laura's hands found their way to my arms. She clawed against me in pain and terror, leaving streaks of red along my flesh.

"Natasha, I need you to call 9-1-1 right now."

"La—Laura?" she stuttered.

"Natasha!" Frightened, she looked at me. "Get your phone. Dial 9-1-1. Tell them how to get here. Do it now." She knew that tone. The one I only adopted twice in the entire time we'd worked together. The first time I'd been gut shot on a mission and figured I'd either be alive, or dead, in fifteen minutes without medical care. The second, time I'd gone through a pane glass window and took a shard right in the femoral artery. My voice said to stop thinking, do as I say, I am in control. It was the only time she ever bowed to my whim without question.

Flipping on her Black Widow switch, Natasha receded into the emotionless femme fetale I knew so well. She took a few steps away from us, plucked her phone out of her jacket pocket, and pulled her hoodie over her hair. I imagined the thinking, feeling Natasha wouldn't be making a reappearance for a few hours yet. It gave me enough time to formulate the well-worn game plan.

"How long?" I whispered to Laura, holding her tightly as the spasms of premature labor rocked through her. In my mind I counted the weeks since we first found out she was pregnant. Twenty-four. Five and a half months. Too soon. I closed my eyes and tried my utter best to keep it together.

"I couldn't reach the—the phone. Clint, the baby—" Her nails dug into my arm and I didn't care. I continued to sit on the floor with her, blood and whatever else pooled around us. I hated this. I hated the loss. Why wasn't it easy? Why couldn't it be simple? Why us?

"Shh," I soothed, rocking her a little. It always seemed to go like this, though never so far along.

"I need . . . Clint, I need to push . . ."

I shook my head against her hair. "Don't do it. Just hold onto me. We'll get through this."

She arched back against me. Her head falling into the crook of my neck. As strong as I was, I couldn't do anything to take that pain away from her. I knew we didn't have a chance. I knew our baby couldn't make it, not this early, but if she pushed now then what could we possibly do? Holding one more tiny life as it died in my hands might just ruin me for good.

"Hang on. They'll get here soon." I soothed, trying to convince her and myself. I could feel Natasha's shadow looming over my back. Without turning around, I said to her, "Nat, I need you to do me a favor. Cooper's sleeping. Can you stay here and watch him while I go with Laura?"

She didn't answer me. I supposed I never expected her to. She'd do as I asked and raise no qualms about it. Us leaving her in the empty house afforded a chance to be alone with her thoughts, something I suspected she dearly wanted now.

Driving into the hospital became a blur of flashing lights, screaming wife, and jostling movement. The placenta had torn away. No one knew why. No one ever seemed to know a definitive reason for me losing any of my babies. Our world had the ability to form Helicarriers that disappeared into the air, giant green rage monsters from a lab, and freeze a World War II war hero in a block of ice, but it could never tell me why I lost so many kids. Why I kept having to bury them every couple years. I wanted to scream, tear out my hair, throw a chair through a window, or just lay down and cry myself to sleep. Instead I did nothing. That's what my wife needed. Laura deserved to have me crawl up in the hospital bed with her, pull her into my strong arms, and just hold her until she fell asleep. Her tears stained my shirt. She cried for three hours before the strain became too much and exhaustion finally took over.

The first two miscarriages were different. The babies were small, smaller than my hand. We held the tiny bodies and said a final, horrified goodbye to them. We buried Natalia at the cemetery close to home. The last time I kissed my little girl, she was already dead and cold in her crib. This baby, this twenty-four-week old, red, silent child emerged into this world in the back of an ambulance. The paramedic did CPR the entire way to the hospital. I never got to touch her. I figured I never would.

Sometime after nine, Natasha arrived in our hospital room. I told the staff to let her up, claiming she was Laura's sister. It became our typical rouse to get her around security. She stood in the doorway, arms folded, hood up, jacket tightly closed, looking drawn in and so very vulnerable. It struck me cold seeing her that way. I guess now it was high time I owed her an explanation.

I slipped my arm out from under Laura's head, replacing it with my pillow. Arranging the blanket tightly around her body, I slowly climbed out of bed and padded into the hallway. Natasha gave my wife a fleeting, emotionless look, and followed me. She closed the door.

Natasha didn't demand anything from me. In a way, if I never said anything at all, she might have accepted it and went about her life. She could erase this night from her memory like one might delete a file from a computer. The Black Widow operatives hardwired her that way. In my opinion, she deserved better.

"The room's cleaned. Cooper went to school with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple, pear, and an apple juice box. I filled his water bottle and put it into his back pack. His things were already packed. I put on his green sneakers, khakis, and sent him with a coat. It's supposed to be fifty degrees today." Facts and figures sometimes brought her comfort. More than that, were the details. I nodded at her assessment and tried to figure out what the Hell I should say to her.

"Thank you." I started with.

She shifted her feet, tightened her arms around her middle and glanced up the hall. A nurse wheeled someone's newborn into a room. The child was crying.

"I'm sorry I never told you."

Her bottom lip wedged between her teeth and she bit down, hard. The crying baby disappeared behind a door, muffling the sounds.

"This was the forth."

She shifted her feet again, rolled her shoulders, and seemed tense enough to double as a flag pole. Now that I'd started, I had to finish it.

"Lillian died almost five months in. We hadn't picked out a name yet. We didn't even know she was a girl yet. Laura woke up one night, bleeding, and I rushed her in. We found out she was miscarrying. The same thing happened with Callie. She made it to six months. They were our first kids, before Cooper. We stopped the IVF because we thought maybe it had something to do with it. We know it didn't, but what else could we think?" I felt that familiar, stabbing, ache hit my chest and I had to turn away from her. I rubbed a hand over my tired eyes.

"After Cooper, she got pregnant again right away." God, this hurt. I leaned against the wall with my forehead, trying to just get the truth out and not die in the process. "You were picking up my slack. Fury told everyone I had Meningitis. After everything we went through, I needed to be with her as much as I could. We named her Natalia." I swallowed hard and shifted slightly to see the color completely drain out of her face. "We wanted to surprise you when you got back. She just died. No reason. I went to check on her before I went to sleep and she was just laying there, limp, dead. The paramedics had to pull me off her. I did CPR, they did too, I didn't want to let her go. Nat, I never told you because I couldn't."

Emotion constricted my throat and I closed my eyes. "We wanted more kids, but not like that. Not anymore. This was a surprised. We didn't want you to know, because we didn't want to get attached in case . . . in case . . ."

Natasha's barrier broke. She crossed the air between us and collapsed into my chest, clamping her hands together behind my back. I felt like I might fall right into her. The tears I kept Laura from seeing all came out now. As strong as I was, I couldn't stop this. I was powerless to protect the most innocent life of all. My own children. I wondered what was wrong with me? What had I done to deserve it? Laura was an angel, for loving me, for the work she did, in everything my superior. It had to be me.

"I'm sorry, are you Mr. Barton?"

Paperwork. Forms. Insurance. Funeral arrangements. Those were the only reasons why hospital personnel came up to me in times like this, and frankly I didn't have it in me to speak to them. Natasha extracted herself and turned toward the doctor.

"What does he need to do?" she asked, the assassin once more driving the emotion out of her.

"We just wanted to give you an update. I know it's been an emotional few hours, and we've been working very hard," the man said.

My legs couldn't hold me up any longer. I had faith putting Natasha in charge from here out. I sank against the wall, burying my head in my hands.

"Update on what?" she asked.

"The lungs, while not fully developed, aren't as traumatic as most preemies her age. We've delivered a dose of surfactant and have her on a breathing tube for now, but so far things look promising. We have the umbilical catheter in place and, though she's doesn't have a suckling reflex, she's handling the IV fluids fairly well."

I felt Natasha's hand batting my shoulder. I didn't rise.

"Wait, you're telling me she's alive?!" Natasha exclaimed.

The doctor sounded surprised, surely just as much as my partner was. "I'm . . . I'm so sorry, didn't anyone come to tell you? Anyone at all?"

If I hadn't stepped in, Natasha might have killed him for that.

I had to see her for myself and prove that the child surrounded by stacks of machines, oxygen, and wrapped in a plastic bubble was mine. The baby was hardly bigger than my hand. I remembered slipping off my wedding ring and fitting it right up her arm all the way to the shoulder. Our baby girl. Our living, gorgeous, baby girl. I cried when Cooper was born. They were elated tears full of pent up emotion, and a good deal of pain from the nose I busted. Seeing that impossibly small child nestled in her incubator I cried much differently.

It took months to bring her home. In that time Fury came to visit us, in the flesh, at the hospital. I let him hold our little girl. She fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. Immediately, he was as smitten as the rest of us. Coulson drove with him. He bought a stuffed dog along the way. The toy was larger than her, a point that made all of us laugh.

After understanding the reality of what Laura and I went through, that we'd named a little girl Natalia, and soon lost her, Natasha didn't press about a second chance. Regardless, we gave her Natasha's middle name, Aliana. Tasha came to the hospital as often as time allowed, and stayed late into the nights. If visiting hours were over, she'd help me break in to sit with her. The staff got used to it, and stopped ordering us out. After all, it didn't do any good.

On the day she was supposed to have been born, Laura and I brought Lila Aliana Smith-Barton home for the first time. Fury, unbeknownst to us, waited there with a few gifts he'd rounded up from our closest friends, (Phil, Natasha, and him). Natasha dressed Cooper up like a miniature Hawkeye. The entire living room was decked out in pink, and the baby room had been repainted, redesigned, and dare say even finished. I'd gotten behind on that between work and spending time with my favorite girls. It took five more months of waking up every single hour of the night before my wife and I felt confident that Lila would be all right. Our family had pulled through.

And, most importantly according to my partner, Natasha finally had a little girl to show how to do a reverse spinning back kick.

Priorities.

* * *

O.M.G. poor Clint. this is so tragic, I couldn't help but write it. Little Lila captivating hearts from the moment she was born. And I think it is TOO MUCH that "Bun Bun" was the stuffed dog Coulson gave her when she was born.

I don't know where I'm going from here. i'll see where inspiration takes me. I kinda like the idea of the Avengers showing up eventually in his life, especially from the perspective I've written for Clint here...but i don't know.

Stay tuned.

Please review!


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